Customer Reviews

Travelogue

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For all the press that synth pop got in the early 80s, not a lot of it has held up particularly well, except at the more experimental end of what could still sort of be called pop. Suicide's first album still sounds fab, Cabaret Voltaire's early Rough Trade material makes increasingly wonderful aesthetic sense, but it's the Human League who finally seem to be undergoing a long overdue critical reevaluation. This began with the release of a CD of "pre-Human League" recordings made largely under the name "The Future". It continues with the reissue and remastering of the first three Human League albums.

"Travelogue" is the band's true masterpiece. Much more cohesive than its predecessor "Reproduction", it maintains a unique experimental edge that's largely (though not entirely) lost on their next album, "Dare" - but it's loaded with songs that are full of great ideas, catchy tunes and stark beauty. It's hard to resist "The Black Hit Of Space" - wherein a song so bland becomes a black hole, sucking up everything in its orbit and climbing so high in the charts that it reaches negative numbers - in this day and age. They turn a commercial jingle for gin into a lovely tune, cover Iggy, Mick Ronson and Gary Glitter, and convincingly too.

What's new about this remaster? Well, it sounds great - better than the original vinyl and miles beyond the earlier CD issue. Other than that, it looks the same from the outside, but inside the booklet are expanded lyrics and credits. That's the good stuff... Oh well. It's nearly the length of two LPs (there are 7 bonus tracks) and worth every penny anyway.

For the record, "Reproduction" and "Dare" are similarly remastered and worth it too. Each has 8 bonus tracks.

There is something about this album that is strange and unique. It is truly a work of art-- themes of industrialization, automation, and isolation are echoed by machine-like synthesizer sounds of the late 70's. It is haunting yet charming at the same time. Poignant, but with a sense of humor too. This is rare and under appreciated album and probably always will be. The bonus tracks are equally as good, most notably "I don't depend on you" with its surprising disco-era sound. Not for everybody, but definitely can be appreciated by fans of Gary Numan's early work such as "Telekon" and "Dance"

I was listening to the Human League back in late 79 when if you listened to "Alternative Music" you were considered weird. This album pre-dates the well known DARE with its hit "Don't you want me." I never resented the Human League for going to a more mainstream pop sound - they have bills to pay same as averyone else; but some of my friends did resent that very much and stopped listening to the Human League from that point on. The first two albums REPRODUCTION and TRAVELOGUE did not do very well in terms of sales, but they are some of the most inspired and inspiring sounds you'll ever hear. The genius of Philip Oakey is undeniable and shines through in every song. His voice is filled with longing, frustration, love and pain. He uses it like a paintbrush to color the synth melodies with shades of emotions the likes of which only come from people with deep feelings and undescribable passion. My favorite song is "dreams of leaving," when he begins to sing "Someone stopped the clock, when we should have started early...if we miss the morning meeting, our lives will be in danger. Someone's trying to stop us, there is someone in our party. It is someone with a grudge and they won't let us reach the border..." it brings tears to my eyes. When you hear the song "Listen to the Voice of Buddha" you'll understand what it's like to be "boiled alive for some god's stocking," and you'll understand that "...just because the kid's an orphan is no excuse for thoughtless slaying, people don't forget there's torture... Buddha's watching, Buddha's waiting!" I own everything the Human League ever released and listen to it quite often, especially REPRODUCTION and now I'll be able to enjoy TAVELOGUE on CD. Incidentally, in case you're interested, there is this little, obscure, lesser known album by the Human League called ROMANTIC? (with a question mark at the end) that came after DARE and HYSTERIA. most of it is mainstream pop, but there's one song called "The Stars Are Going Out" that is reminescent of their old stuff. Philip's voice is filled with this almost bittersweet resignation; it is the voice of a man who's realizing that youth is leaving him. It is as if he's reflecting on his past when he says "we used to be so tough, but just not tough enough that's all." I love the Human League, and recommend it to anyone who is interested in learning about the beginnigs of electronic music in the 70's. These guys are up there with Kraftwerk and all the other pioneers of synth.

This is The Human League at their finest. I've been a fan of The Human League since the early 1980's. I never heard this album until the late 1980's as it was rare on Vinyl back when Vinyl was king. I have yet to hear it on CD and I'm very much looking forward to it. This album, with cuts such as "The Black Hit of Space," "Dreams of Leaving," and "WXJL Tonight" truly shines. It shows the kind of power even "Techno-Pop" or "New Wave" as the League's music was called back in the early 80's, is capable of weilding. With excellent Synthesizer work as usual, and clever production by Martin Rushent, this album still blows me away as a statement on just how "real" synthesizer music can be.

This is, as far as I'm concerned, the last Human League album. What came after under that name, when compared to the groundbreaking synthpop on this (and the previous but not as strong "Reproduction"), is very watered-down, by comparison. True, it sold better, but in this case, sales don't equal quality. What's here is some of the finest synthesizer pop out of Europe, easily in the same ranks as Kraftwerk or Jean-Michel Jarre. And the lyrical sensibilities here surpass even those: a little story about a record that 'swallows all the charts', an ominous look into urban/suburban hostility and paranoia, a scathing indictment about the disappearance of radio that 'really mattered', and so on. For those who think the high water mark of Human League comes with "Dare", get this and be prepared for a shock!

I'm very torn on the Human League. I love the idea of the band as well as a lot of their old work, but I think they hit a rut sadly early in their career (and rock bottom with "Human").

Travelogue makes more sense to me as an album than the rest of their offerings. It's not the conceptual hodgepodge of Reproduction, and it's not the sleek-but-compromised pop of Dare. It's just foreboding enough to still seem interesting, and pop enough to be enjoyable.

The bonus tracks are an asset to the release and I enjoyed the liners as well.

I love this record and the synth work done on it,get it if your into 80's synth stuff.

I wasn't sure what to expect since I knew that the band at this time was not a pop dancing band, and was a more pre-Tarantino kind of style, but I felt reassured when I heard Being Boiled. When I got the album, I was more satisfied than I expected! It was still a rock kind of music you could dance to, but a little more darker with the lyrics and synthesizers; they are still the same Human League I know, just a different style of them, but still deep down, still the Human League they turned out to be. Some of the most favored songs on Travelogue is "Life Kills", "Rock n' Roll/Nightclubbing", and "Gordon's Gin." Whether or not this album was remastered, I would still have loved it! But the great thing is this album is remastered with six extra tracks! Overall, it was a great CD!!!

I've never been a Human League fan but I bought Reproduction and was amazed at it's icy, chilly and perhaps wintry approach. This however is a bit like the thawing process between Reproduction and Dare and as a result it seems a bit patchy. The Black Hit Of Space is a good song and so is their cover of Only After Dark, but Dreams of Leaving really show up Phil Oakey's limitations as a singer. I suppose the same can be said for TBHOS were Oakey sounds a little wooden. Tracks like Marianne and a few others are pretty good but they just don't have the same heart as the songs on Reproduction. Having said that there are moments within some of those songs that are not so great where the song briefly comes alive and then dies off.....which was never the case with Reproduction.....it's a shame though that Ware and Marsh left the band because with that Human League's creative was stolen and soon they became a complete mess ( well OK after Don't You Want Me, Baby? - the classic karaoke hit of the 80s ). Their songs became bland and not much else.

I've made this point out that if Reproduction was like Cronenberg's Shivers, then Travelogue was like Rabid, a poor patchy product that has it's moments but not as satisfying. I could be wrong of course. It's just my opinion that's all